Return of the Magic
Josh Thornton
It was the 1980’s in Cleveland, Ohio. Teens were rarely seen without their Walkman or newest style of Air Jordan’s. Hip-Hop was exploding not only in terms of popularity, but audibly exploding… out of the ever popular Ghetto Blasters. Then there was the fashion, oh that wonderful 80’s apparel. Questionable clothing and now dated technology aside, there was another constant in the mid to late 80’s… the Cleveland Browns were good.
It was the days of Byner, Mack, Slaughter, and of course, Boardman’s own Bernie Kosar. You know… the guy they made parody songs about. Replacing lyrics to songs like “Louie, Louie” in homage of the Cleveland quarterback. There were literally a dozen other songs in that Browns era of football, enough to fill a solid hour long block on the radio leading up to kickoff. Yes… it was like that.
The city was electric. Each year brought with it the very real possibility that the Browns would be playing for the coveted Lombardi trophy. Browns gear was your Sunday best. The team was respected, the team was feared. I was a bit too young to fully recall finite details about that time in Cleveland football history, but it defiantly felt like I was old enough to remember every detail… Growing up in a Browns household and all. The Browns were life in Cleveland and the city was alive!
Leading the charge of those Browns was a man who demanded a high level of physicality from his squad. He understood his players and they looked to him as a father-type figure. His ability to connect to players helped him get the most out of everyone. He was a motivator and had a playbooks worth of speeches to get it done. The most notable being the “there’s a gleam” speech. That isn’t the one that sticks in my mind though. Marty spoke about the game of football being decided by inches. Not the inches actually marked out on the field though… “in the six inches between your breastbone and your backbone”. Heart… he was saying heart was the most important aspect of the game. Marty’s team surely played with heart. You could say that during his run in Cleveland, Marty got the whole city to buy into this mantra. While the players definitely had to play well for success to come, I don’t think it could have been what it was without Marty. He brought something back to Cleveland that had been lost since the days of Otto Graham and his 10 straight titles… the magic.
Fast forward 3 decades. The Browns are coming off a season in which we saw chain after chain broken. Milestone after milestone reached. It was a season in which our beloved franchise crawled out of the depths of football Hell and back into relevancy, after years or dormancy. Sound familiar? This version of the Cleveland Browns has talent, like those 80’s teams did. We have our own Mack, Byner, Slaughter and Kosar. Players like Chubb, Hunt, Landry and Mayfield now carry the torch lit more than 30 years ago.
Like the 80’s Kardiac Kids version of the Browns, this new aged version cannot do it on talent alone. We were all witness to that fact during the 2019 Kitchens campaign. It took a leader to bring it together. It took someone who demanded discipline, execution and heart.The team needed someone who could grab the player’sattention and be a motivator of men. Enter one Kevin Stefanski.
Coach Stefanski has been the catalyst to this Browns resurgence as Marty was to the one oh so many years ago. They say history repeats itself. I don’t know if that applies here or not, but, I do know this… The magic is Back!
Go Browns!
